As we work to bring even more value to our audience, we’ve made important changes for those who receive Ad Age with our compliments. As of November 15, 2016 we will no longer be offering full digital access to AdAge.com. However, we will continue to send you our industry-leading print issues focused on providing you with what you need to know to succeed.

If you’d like to continue your unlimited access to AdAge.com, we invite you to become a paid subscriber. Get the news, insights and tools that help you stay on top of what’s next.

statement, Richard Kirshenbaum and Jon Bond, the agency's co-chairmen, announced the decision to terminate Nigel Carr, managing partner and general manager.

Noel Cottrell
The statement went on to say that a new management team, which would include Managing Partner and Executive Creative Director Noel Cottrell, would be announced Jan. 9. The office has 35 employees.

A spokeswoman for the agency said she was "not at liberty" to discuss any aspect of the office's restructuring, including the reasons for Mr. Carr's termination.

Mr. Carr, who in the past has indicated he had an ownership stake in the San Francisco office, in a statement said the move "came totally out of the blue in view of [the agency's] extremely successful year financially and creatively in 2003 so I'm still in a state of shock, but I plan to take some time figuring out what to do next."

Joined in 1991
Mr. Carr, who worked in London with three different agencies, moved to New York in 1984 to become a planner at Chiat/Day. He joined Kirshenbaum in 1991 when the agency had 18 employees and the next year was named managing partner and director of brand planning. By August 1997, the shop had grown to 200 employees and Mr. Carr left to open the agency's first office outside New York with the title managing partner and director of brand planning.

The change comes at a time when the Toronto-based holding company MDC Corp., which owns a 49% stake in Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Miami, is said to be looking to purchase some U.S. shops, including Kirshenbaum and another New York independent, Cliff Freeman & Partners.

~ ~ ~Editor's Note: The statement from Nigel Carr was added to this story Jan. 7.